


Would You Still Love Me in A Hundred Years?

by LemonBubble



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil Might be Human or Inhuman, M/M, Mostly set in the past, but it's not a victorian au, like 140 years in the past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1714061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonBubble/pseuds/LemonBubble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Carlos blinked slowly awake. He was... outside. Lying on the ground, outside. That was… unusual. What happened? There had been the machine, a flash of light and now he was outside. Ok. So... maybe it was a teleportation device? That wasn't too outlandish. He did a quick body check. Two arms, two legs, one head, all his teeth. Nothing seemed to be missing, which was a good sign, especially if the machine <i>was</i> some kind of teleporter. What next? Find out where he was."</p><p>A story of Hope, Love, Tragedy, Science, and A Cheese Sandwich. (But hopefully not too much tragedy).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Machine

**Author's Note:**

> A thing you should know about me: I really like subverting fandom trends. I started writing this when Victorian AUs were all the rage a couple of months ago and I would really like to finish it, so I'm hoping that posting it while it's still in progress and getting feedback will be enough encouragement for that to happen.

These kinds of mornings were the best. The ones where Carlos woke up before the alarm went off, to the sight of the sun streaming in through the window in the thick, golden, lazy way of morning sunlight. The mornings where he could just spend a few minutes lying in bed, watching the peaceful rise and fall of his boyfriend’s chest as he slept.

“Carlos?” Cecil asked suddenly, making Carlos jump. He hadn’t realised Cecil was awake yet.

“Yeah?” Carlos said, as Cecil rolled over to lie on his stomach and look at Carlos properly.

“Do you ever get the feeling that we’ve met before? A long time ago?”

Carlos thought about it for a moment before saying, “I don’t think so. Why, do you?”

Cecil nodded. “Not all the time but… every now and then, you do or say something that just seems _so_ familiar. It’s like deja vu, except that deja vu has been illegal for decades now, so it couldn’t be that.”

“Maybe that’s what fate feels like.” Carlos said, grinning.

“You don’t believe in fate though.”

“No, but you do, and isn’t that enough?”

Cecil opened his mouth, stopped, closed it again and frowned for a second. “You know what, it might be. Fate can be funny like that.” He said with a grin.

The sudden buzzing of the alarm clock put an end to the conversation. Carlos rolled over to plant a kiss on Cecil’s nose before getting up to get ready for work. The question stayed in his head all day though, nagging at him. _Had_ they met before? Was it possible that he had met someone as fantastic and memorable as Cecil and simply forgotten him? How could he do that? Maybe they had met in another life. Reincarnation seemed much less impossible after a few years in Night Vale. Of course, it could also be something as simple as fate. He kept thinking of possible ways they could have met before, turning them over in his head, until he got to the lab and the machine took up all his attention.

-

“Hand me that wrench.” Carlos said, sticking out his arm and hoping someone nearby was paying attention. The tool landed in his hand and he turned back to the machine that was currently taking up almost half the lab. They had been working on this project for weeks and he could swear it was almost finished. Whatever it was. It was just something that had demanded to be built. Everyone in the lab had felt the undeniable urge to work on it, and they had all contributed in some way. Carlos tightened a bolt and, on an impulse, dropped the wrench into a small vat of acid that had a fish, somehow still alive, in it. The wrench seemed right there, like that was where it belonged. Carlos wished he could explain _why_ it belonged there, but that had been the nature of the machine so far. Just stick something somewhere and it was probably the right place. He was pretty sure it didn’t even need most of the parts they had given it, but he wasn’t prepared to take anything away until it was finished and working.

Carlos stepped back and looked up at the monstrosity. It was just… it was _so close_ to being finished. It needed… something. Just one more thing, one tiny missing piece and that was it. Maybe they would even get to know what it was when it was finished. On the other hand, it could just vanish like the last piece of mysterious machinery the scientists had been compelled to put together. That one had been much smaller and much… pointier. After it disappeared, they had gotten a friendly note from the Sheriff’s Secret Police thanking them for their service to the community, so Carlos had assumed they had taken it.

This though… it was far too big to disappear easily, so there was a general hope in the lab that they would get to see what it did when it was finished. Then, of course, there would be tests to run and hypotheses to form and experiments to do. If they were _really_ lucky everyone might get the same answer to the question they were all asking - what, exactly, was it?

For now though, Carlos looked around and noticed that at least half the team were staring blankly at the machine. They were probably all thinking what he was, trying to work out what last little thing it wanted. No one was actually getting anything done, despite the fact that they all had experiments besides the machine that they were supposed to be working on.

“Let’s stop for lunch.” He decided.

“But Carlos, it’s almost finished! There’s just… it needs…” Marie, a biologist who had added a small terrarium to the machine, sighed in frustration. “Something.”

“I know, I feel it too, but we’ve been working on this thing non-stop since we got here and I think it’s time to take a break.” Carlos said firmly. “A little time away from it will do us all good.”

Despite general grumbling, Carlos managed to shoo everyone to the break room. About half the team actually had lunch, while the rest leaned sulkily against the walls, sighing and glancing out the door at the machine every few seconds. Carlos didn’t eat either, instead opting to pace up and down the room, thinking about what could be missing from the machine, what it would do when it was finished, and wondering briefly if anyone had even touched their non-machine related experiments all day. It was frustrating to have it sitting there, demanding to be finished. Just… one more thing… something small, something… Carlos stopped pacing. Marie had taken a sandwich out of the fridge.

“What kind of sandwich is that?” He asked. Marie hesitated.

“Cheese. Why?”

“Can I borrow it?”

“Uh… sure.” Marie said with a shrug. “I don’t know if I want it back when you’re done with it though.”

“Uh-huh, thanks.” Carlos said, practically snatching the sandwich and taking it out to the lab. He unwrapped it as he went, squinting at the machine. There would be a place… somewhere it would just fit in. Somewhere a sandwich _belonged_. It took him almost three minutes of staring at the machine before he spotted the plate. Of course. Sandwiches lived on plates. Carlos didn’t think plates lived in terrariums, but who knew where plates lived really. Maybe the terrarium mimicked the natural habitat of a wild plate. He made a mental note to look into whether or not wild plates actually existed before he put the sandwich in its place.

By now the rest of the scientists had come out of the break room to watch. There was a rumbling, faint at first, but quickly getting louder. Carlos had just enough time to turn to his team, point excitedly at the machine, and declare “I think it’s finished!” before there was a bright flash of light and then nothing.


	2. Arrival

Carlos blinked slowly awake. He was... outside. Lying on the ground, outside. That was… unusual. What happened? There had been the machine, a flash of light and now he was outside. Ok. So... maybe it was a teleportation device? That wasn't too outlandish. He sat up and his head immediately started spinning and pounding. Right, that was alright, he could handle a headache. He did a quick body check. Two arms, two legs, one head, all his teeth. Nothing seemed to be missing, which was a good sign, especially if the machine _was_ some kind of teleporter. What next? Find out where he was. Carlos looked around, squinting in the bright afternoon sun. Hmm, that seemed to be in a different place than it should be, but on the other hand, who ever knew with the sun in Night Vale. Assuming he was still in Night Vale, anyway.

There was a house nearby. It looked like it was at the edge of a town, judging by the few houses he could see scattered out past it. He stood up, taking a moment to get his balance (who knew teleporting could be so rough on the body?), and headed for the house. Carlos knocked and a moment later the door opened a crack.

"Hello? Who are ya?" The woman inside the house demanded.

"Hi, I'm Carlos, I'm just wondering-"

"Yer a scientist?" The woman asked, squinting at his coat.

"Uh, yes, I was just wondering if you could-"

"Oh well, if yer a scientist, come right in." The woman said, opening the door and waving Carlos in.

"Er. Alright." Carlos said, stepping inside. Now that he could see more than just a sliver of her face, he realised the woman was oddly familiar, though he was sure he had never met her before.

"Ya want a drink or something?" She offered.

"Uh, no, thank you. I don't want to impose, if you could just tell me where I am I'll be on my way."

"Ya don't know where ya are? What kind of scientist are ya?" The woman asked accusingly.

"Well, you see, I was just doing some science before I got here and I think I may have made a teleportation device? Or, I mean, _we_ made or... I would posit that it made itself? We just built it is all. Anyway, I just need to know where I am to determine the effects the device may have. Range and such."

"Alright, fair enough. So if I tell ya where ya are, I'm helping with Science?"

"Oh, yes, definitely." Carlos nodded.

The woman nodded, seeming pleased. "Yer on the edge of town." She said.

"Um. Which town?"

"Night Vale."

"Ok, good, that means... hmm. Which edge of town?"

"The west."

"West... edge of town... but." Carlos frowned. Spatial thinking was never his strong suit, but something about this being the west edge of town didn't seem right. "If this is the west edge of town, shouldn't this be Larry Leroy's house?" He realised, as he asked, that that was who the woman reminded him of. She looked almost exactly like a beardless Larry Leroy.

"Larry? I don't know no Larry, but I'm definitely a Leroy. Lana Leroy." The woman, Lana, sniffed.

"Ok... but this is definitely Larry Leroy's house..." Carlos started pacing back and forth, thinking out loud.

"No it ain't." Lana put in.

"So if this _isn’t_ Larry's house then... maybe not a teleportation device? Maybe... I mean, this could possibly be another universe, assuming the many universes theory is true, which, I suppose I would have just proven it to be, if this _is_ another universe. Except, of course, I won't actually have proven it unless I can repeat the experiment and obviously I would need to get back home first to do that... If this is another universe, how would I get back home? What if this _isn’t_ another universe? What could it be? What if I..." He hesitated and his face fell. "What if I can't get home? I need to know for sure where I am!" He turned around and looked intently at Lana. "I need to know _everything_ about where we are right now. Let's start with the basics. What planet is this?"

"Ya sure yer a scientist? 'Cos yer starting to seem like a plain ol' madman to me." Lana said suspiciously.

"No, no, definitely a scientist. Look, I have the lab coat and everything. Now, stop me if I'm wrong about any of this. We're on Earth, right?" He waited for a nod before continuing. "Ok, and this is North America? Southwestern United States? Night Vale? There's another town nearby called Desert Bluffs?" Lana sneered at that, but still nodded. "Ok, and judging by your reaction there's still local rivalry between the towns. So far so good... what else could I be missing?" He started pacing again. "Differences... what could be different here? You have the Sheriff's Secret Police?"

"They only been around for a couple years now, but yeah, we got 'em."

"A couple..." Carlos froze. "Time travel! What year is it?!"

"1876, or there abouts. What ya mean 'time travel'? That's illegal that is."

"Eighteen... no way. That's 140 years ago. I can't have... how can I..." Carlos sat down heavily in a nearby chair. It made sense, though. If he had travelled back in time then Lana was probably an ancestor of Larry’s, which would explain the resemblance. So far it was all he had to go on. Of course he would need more data to confirm that hypothesis, and then he needed to work out how to get back to his own time. "Wait, you said time travel is illegal? No it isn't, they made it legal... oh. About three years ago. Er. Could you maybe not tell anyone that I might be a time traveller?" Carlos said, lowering his voice and hoping like hell the SSP hadn't heard him already. Maybe they hadn't refined their surveillance techniques and they weren't in every house yet.

Lana looked at him suspiciously for a moment before nodding. "Alright, if anyone asks I don't know nothing about no time travel. Yer just a scientist who got lost or somethin'."

"Ok. Good. Thank you." Carlos covered his face with his hands, taking a moment to consider his situation. He was sitting in the house of a stranger, 140 years in the past, with a killer headache, and no idea how to get back home. Well. Things could be worse, he decided. He couldn't think, right then, _how_ exactly they could be worse, but there was probably some way. Besides, he was a Scientist. He had a problem (admittedly a very large and complicated problem) and now he had to solve it. Solving problems was a Scientist's job and Carlos was good at his job. _Ok just start with the basics_ , he thought.

"I need to get home. To do that, I need to build a time machine." That was the big problem. "So... I need access to equipment, a lab ideally. Somewhere to stay while I’m here." Carlos was up and pacing again. "I need to... ugh, Night Vale, I need to know laws, I need to avoid the police, I need... I don't know, someone with contacts? Who knows the town? Someone who can help me get all this stuff."

"Hmm. Sounds like ya should talk to Cecil." Lana suggested. Carlos stopped dead.

"Ce-cecil?" He stuttered. _It's just a name, it's just a coincidence, that's all._

"Cecil Palmer. The radio guy. He knows everything about everything, far as I can tell."

"...Palmer." Carlos muttered to himself. No way. Absolutely impossible. "Cecil... _Gershwin_ Palmer?" He asked in disbelief, half hoping Lana would say no.

"That's him." She nodded. "Why, ya know him?

"N-no, I... no. I don't think so, anyway. I mean, how could I know him? It's impossible, right? How could I know someone from over a hundred years ago." It was just a name after all. Names could be handed down through families, and it wouldn’t surprise Carlos to learn that the Palmer family had been in Night Vale for generations. He was jumping to conclusions here. Someone having the same name as someone else didn’t mean they were the same person.

"Long lived?" Lana suggested with a shrug.

"Right, sure." Carlos said with a half-hearted chuckle. "So, this... radio guy. Do you know where I could find him?"

"Fair chance he'll be at the radio station. Broadcast starts in..." Lana glanced at the grandfather clock standing against the far wall. "About an hour. Should take you half as long to walk there. It's the building with the radio tower on it, can't miss it."

"Yeah, I know the one." Carlos nodded. He ran his hands through his hair, wondering what his next move should be. Going to see Ce... the radio guy seemed like the best option right now. "Ok. Ok, thanks Lana." He said and headed towards the door.

"Ya sure ya don't want a drink or nothin'? Ya seem like ya could do with a cup of tea and a moment to relax." Lana offered again.

"No, I should just be going. The sooner I start the sooner I can get home."

"Fair enough." Lana said with a shrug. "Good luck. You'll probably need it."

Carlos just waved as he left. He looked at the town, the scattered houses getting more densely packed closer to the center. The town hall was just visible to the right. A few of the taller buildings were missing, but the skyline was surprisingly familiar. The radio tower (only one, Carlos noticed. Seemed like the number station wasn't around yet) was where it always was, near the middle of town, the red light on the top blinking like a beacon, a familiar lighthouse in a foreign sea. Carlos knew the way. He set out for the radio station.


	3. The Station

Carlos got to the radio station without incident. The route was different in a few places, but overall it seemed like Night Vale had changed very little in more than a hundred years. That was to be expected, really, with a town as small as Night Vale. It wasn’t the kind of place where things changed much.

He knocked on the first door he found at the station. It was answered by a short, skinny boy with blonde hair that stuck out everywhere.

"Why are you knocking?" He asked, squinting at Carlos. "Oh. You're not Mr. Cecil."

"Uh, no, I was just, uh. Looking for him, I suppose." Carlos said. "Are you an intern?"

"A what? I don’t think that’s a real word mister. _I'm_ a trainee." The boy said with just a hint of pride. He seemed to realise something, and his eyes went wide suddenly. "Oh! Are you the new Scientist?!"

"New... oh, don't tell me." Carlos said with a sigh. This was all far too familiar. "You have a town scientist who regularly runs away, dies, or otherwise disappears. The last one got out a few days ago and you think I'm the replacement?"

"Bloody hell you’re smart.” The trainee sounded genuinely impressed. “Except, the last Scientist only left this morning. They got you here really fast, didn’t they?"

"Who's 'they'?"

"I don't know, whoever sends the scientists. Come on in," The trainee continued, stepping aside and waving Carlos in. "You'll be wanting to talk to Mr. Cecil, I'm sure, and he'll definitely be wanting to interview the new Scientist."

Carlos opened his mouth to protest, to explain why he couldn't be the town's scientist, but he stopped himself. This was the perfect opportunity, actually. If old Night Vale was anything like the Night Vale he knew (and so far it _had_ been incredibly similar), then being the town Scientist would be the easiest way for him to get access to a lab and the equipment he needed to rebuild the time machine. Plus, no one would ask why he was building a big weird machine. Unlike being a vagabond trying to find parts to build a time machine, being the town’s Scientist was something Carlos knew how to do. On the other hand, the real replacement Scientist could show up and make things difficult. But, well… Carlos wasn’t planning on staying long, so he decided it wouldn’t matter that much. There was every possibility he would be home before that happened. Besides, he was _technically_ the town Scientist. Just… not yet.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk to Cecil though. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to meet him, because as far as he could tell, there were two possibilities. One was that he’s not the Cecil Carlos knows, which would be disheartening, to say the least. The other was that he _was_ Carlos’s Cecil, which… Well, Carlos really wasn’t sure how he would react to that, actually, so he would rather just avoid it altogether. At least for now.

“Er, well, yes, I am the new Scientist,” Carlos pronounced the capital letter carefully, quickly making up his story as he spoke, “But, I can’t actually stay for an interview at the moment. I’m a little lost and I need directions to the lab and I can’t really be stopping to give interviews before I’m set up properly.”

“Oh.” The trainee looked a little disappointed. “Well, there’s a map in the break room, I can show you where the lab is on there if you like.”

“That would be great, thank you.” Carlos followed the trainee into the station. It looked… not exactly the same, but very very similar to the one he knew. Everything was a slightly different colour and the carpet seemed newer, but those were about the only differences. The main difference in the break room was the lack of graves. There were only four or five, instead of the hundreds Carlos was used to. A map of the town took up a lot of one wall and the trainee spent a few minutes pointing out where the lab was and describing in detail how to get there, though Carlos wasn’t paying much attention. Looking at the map he could see that most things were exactly the same, although there were a few obvious gaps. There was no dog park, but there was a big black box around the place it would be one day. The lab was in the same spot, but it seemed smaller, and there was no Big Rico’s next to it. Carlos found himself wondering if pizza had even been invented yet when he realised the trainee had stopped talking.

“Hm, what?”

“I said did you get all that?” He asked again.

“Oh, yes, thanks. Just one more thing, and then I have to get going. Can you tell me what year it is? I need to know for scientific reasons.” Carlos asked.

“It’s 1875.” The trainee said, without even a hint of curiosity in his answer. No one ever asked why when claimed something was “for science”. “Are you sure you can’t stay a few minutes longer? Mr. Cecil will be here soon and I know he’d love to get an exclusive interview from the Scientist before anyone else even knows you’re here.”

“No, I definitely have to be going now.” Carlos said, heading for the station door. He had a lot on his mind and he needed to get somewhere he could write it all down before it slipped away. He was sure Lana had said the year was 1876, but now this boy was saying it was 1875? Was one of them just wrong? Was it New Years recently and the trainee just forgot?

“Can I at least get a quote from you that I could give Mr. Cecil when he gets here?” The trainee asked, just a little desperately as he followed Carlos down the hall. Carlos paused.

“Tell him… tell him I said that this is, by far, the most scientifically interesting community in the U.S.”

“Is it really?” The trainee said, sounding delighted, just as Carlos opened the door.

“Is what really what?” Cecil asked, standing just outside the door with his hand raised like he’d been about to open it. “Hello, who’s this?”

Carlos stared. He couldn’t help it. This Cecil standing outside the radio station in 1870-something looked exactly like the Cecil he had woken up next to that morning a few hours ago 140 years in the future. _Exactly_ like him - the way he stood, the way he raised his eyebrows in surprise, the way he smiled, although right now it was the smile of a friendly stranger, lacking the softness and familiarity Carlos was used to from Cecil.

“Can I help you?” Cecil asked politely. Carlos opened his mouth, trying to make his brain work fast enough for actual words to come out. He managed to make a noise like “ghk” before walking away as fast he could without running. The trainee could explain. They would put his behaviour down to the fact that he had important science to do or something. Carlos didn’t really care what they thought, he just needed to get away. He needed to get to the lab and start working on going home and not get distracted by the fact this his boyfriend, his _exact boyfriend_ was somehow also 140 years in the past.

Carlos only stopped not-quite-running when he got to the lab. He found the key right where he had hoped it would be, on the top of the doorframe. It was the same place it had been when he first arrived in 2012. Inside, he looked around until found a notebook and an old fashioned dip pen, although he supposed it wasn’t old fashioned now. He was just about to start writing down his thoughts when a voice started speaking. Not just any voice, Cecil’s voice. Startled, Carlos looked for the source. It was coming from a big box up on a shelf that looked like it could almost maybe be an old timey radio. He debated turning it off for a few minutes, because the sound of Cecil’s voice was both reassuring and incredibly worrying right now, but in the end he decided to leave it on. It was only later, after the show (which he hadn’t paid attention to) was over and after he had been scribbling down questions and theories and half-remembered details about the machine for an hour, that he realised he wasn’t sure if radio had even been invented yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long! I had exams and stuff, though they're over now so hopefully the next part will come sooner than this one did.


	4. The Lab

In the lab there was a single bookshelf, with only about twelve books on it. Every one Carlos checked was missing pages and had passages blacked out. One was wrapped in chains and sealed with a lock he that couldn’t find the key for. Normally he wouldn’t find that odd, except that it seemed to be an ordinary physics text book, so he couldn’t think why it would need to be chained up. None of them mentioned anything about radio or radio waves. He suspected that, if there _was_ any information to be had, it would be in the physics book. On the other hand, if radio waves hadn’t been discovered yet, then there would be no real way for him to confirm it. It would be like going to the nineties and asking if iPhones had been invented yet - you would never get an accurate answer because no one knew what an iPhone was. He chewed on the end of his pen for a while, wondering if he should look into this further before deciding that the time machine was more important. Of course, Carlos wasn’t going to just ignore the fact that radio seemed to exist when he was pretty sure it shouldn’t, but right now getting home was his top priority. Maybe when he was finished with the time machine he would hang around for a while and have a go at investigating old school Night Vale weirdness. That could be… educational. He looked over his current list of notes and observations about old Night Vale:

_-1875? 1876? What year is it? Ask opinions, find average._  
-Why different years?  
-No dog park. Whats there instead??  
-How effective are SSP? Can they see what I’m writing right now? Hello say something if you’re reading this. No one said anything. Maybe they’re just not very friendly.  
-Find out if there’s a mandatory food I need to eat. Haven’t seen any pizza places.  
-Has pizza been invented????? 

And added to it:

_-Research radio. Been invented yet? Don’t think so. How do radio work without radio?_

Writing it down was a start at least. Carlos underlined it so he could find it later and put those notes aside to focus on the time machine. He started writing down the bits and pieces that he could remember putting in, or that other people put into the machine. He carefully avoided writing down the words “time machine” anywhere in the notebook, which was separate from the other one and, he had already decided, was never going to leave his side. Just in case. He didn’t actually know what would happen if the secret police found out he was breaking time travel laws, but he would rather not find out.

Barely a half hour after he started properly focusing on the time machine, Carlos noticed that it was getting too dark to write properly. He sighed and got up to find the light switch. There wasn’t one.

“Of _course_ there’s no light switch. Why would there be a light switch? Ugh, have to end up in a time without light switches, why couldn’t I have been stuck in the _nineteen_ seventies, that would have been fun I could like… _disco_ my way home or something.” He muttered to himself while he hunted through the endless cabinets for a light source. He eventually found an oil lamp and lit it, but it was disappointingly dim. Bright enough to see by, sure, and even bright enough to write by, but only just. After a short ten minutes trying to keep working with the flickery fire light, Carlos gave up and decided to just try to get some sleep. It was summer, he could get up early and have plenty of daylight to work by. It was just frustrating because Carlos was used to staying up working through the night.

There was a small office at the back of the lab, familiar in the way that all offices are familiar, simply by being the same as each other. It still had a few of the last scientist’s things scattered around - an old notebook, a pair of cracked glasses, two or three pieces of clothing. At least it looked like whoever they were had left rather than died or been taken away. Carlos took a small comfort in that. There was also a the most basic of beds, little more than a piece of cloth covering a narrow frame. It was not comfortable.

Carlos lay in the cot, staring up at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep. He kept going over and over the day in his mind. It had been such a long day. He had woken up that morning, in his own bed, next to Cecil and now he was here, years in the past, (not) sleeping in a tiny, uncomfortable cot in the back of a lab. Sleeping in the cot was almost nostalgic, in a way. It reminded him of when he first arrived in Night Vale and he slept in all sorts of places - a cot in the back office, the couch in the break room, the creaky sagging bed in the cheap apartment he eventually rented. None of them had been very good places to sleep either. On the other hand… he sighed and rolled over to the sight of absolutely no one beside him, and not enough space for anyone anyway.

After three years of sleeping in a bed with someone else, it just didn’t feel right, not having his arms around Cecil, or Cecil’s arms around him. Carlos stared at the empty space beside him for a while longer before rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling again. Normally when he couldn’t sleep he would get up and do something, but it was just too dark to do anything right now. His only options were to stay and try to sleep or get up and walk around an unfamiliar Night Vale. At night. In the dark. Carlos didn’t have a death wish, so he stayed, staring at the ceiling and counting to 100 in every language he knew until he fell into a restless sleep.

-

Carlos woke up some time in the late morning the next day, disappointed to find that he was still, as far as he could tell, stuck 140 years in the past. He searched the lab from top to bottom for food and couldn’t find any, though he did find an envelope that had been pushed under the door at some point in the night. It had money in it and the words “gRanT MOneY” were written on one side. Carlos stared at it for a while before picking it up with a sigh and muttering “Ok, sure,” under his breath.

He went out and bought food, trying very hard not to notice anything interesting (though he did, because a scientist is observant. It’s the 4th thing a scientist is.), or talk to anyone (everyone tried to talk to him. One lady, who looked very much like an older Simone Rigadeau, asked why his lab coat was so strange, to which he replied “It isn’t. It’s perfectly normal,” probably a little too quickly and nervously. He didn’t know anything about the history of lab coat fashion.), or look too out of place while trying to work out how an old fashioned shop worked. He managed, in the end, but he was disappointed to find that there were no instant noodles or microwave mac and cheese, or in fact, anything that could be made in less than five minutes without any thinking involved. He got his supplies back to the lab and stared at them, despairing slightly. Carlos was not the best of cooks. He put his groceries in the back room and just hoped he would be able to get home soon. Living in the past was already seeming like more of a challenge than he was up to.

Carlos pulled out his time machine notebook and settled in for a day of scribbling and sketching. He wrote down every piece of the machine he could remember, drawing in the shape of it all together and working out what each piece was when he couldn’t remember directly. By the end of the day he had a rough frame for the overall shape of it put together in the lab. It was good to get the parts physically together and everything he put into place helped remind him of what went around it. Carlos spent three days holed up in the lab just working on the time machine. He knew he would, eventually, have to go outside to find more parts, but for now he just worked with what he had, building and writing until it was too dark to see or he couldn’t keep his eyes open any more.

On the third day there was a knock on the door. Carlos, who had fallen asleep at his desk, jerked awake at the sound. He got up to answer the door, unsticking notes from his face as he went. It was Cecil. Without even thinking, mind still fuzzy from sleep, Carlos smiled and said “Hey, Cecil,” inviting him in with a nod of his head. Cecil hesitated, surprised.

“Oh, hello. I uh, hope I didn’t disturb you. Er… can… can I really come in? To your lab?” He said with very badly disguised excitement. It was that tone of voice that woke Carlos up properly, that made him remember where he was and who he was talking to. This was not the Cecil he had been dating for three years. Probably. Chronologically, definitely not.

“Uh. Yeah, of course, come in.” Carlos said, a little less casually this time. Cecil practically bounced into the lab, grinning with delight. He spent a few minutes just looking around, in awe of the equipment. Carlos watched with a smile. It was all so like _his_ Cecil. His smile faded a little. He hadn’t seen or heard from his Cecil in four days. Carlos missed him.

“So!” Cecil spun around and faced Carlos, done with his inspection of the lab. “You have me at a disadvantage here. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Oh, did I not tell your inte- er, trainee my name?” Carlos thought for sure he had, but Cecil shook his head. “Huh. Well, I’m Carlos.” He stuck his hand out and Cecil shook it, still grinning.

“A pleasure to meet you Carlos the Scientist!” Cecil said the name with just the faintest hint of a sigh. Carlos knew him well enough to catch it though ( _Not_ him _, future Cecil. You still don’t know if they’re the same person and you shouldn’t act like they are,_ he reminded himself.)

“You too.” Carlos said with a small smile. He carefully extracted his hand from Cecil’s grip after the other man kept holding on for a little too long, though Cecil kept staring at him. “So, uh, why… why are you here? I mean, uh, why did you come to the lab? Today? Now?”

“Oh! Right, yes.” Cecil blinked and looked away from Carlos, carefully avoiding eye contact. “I was just wondering… well, you’ve been here for a few days now, but no one has seen you around town and. Uh. I was just wondering if you’re getting any science done, I guess. I mean, you don’t have to tell me, of course, if it’s secret science that’s okay, don’t worry about it. I just thought… it would be nice to report on some science?”

“Yeah, of course I’m getting science done. I’m a scientist. Science is what I do.” Carlos said, relieved that that’s all this was. “I can show you, if you wanna see some?”

“I would love to!” Cecil said, his face lighting up. Carlos smiled back and led him over to the time machine, which was still mostly just a framework. He knew this Cecil wasn’t _his_ Cecil, but he _had_ been alone inside the lab for three solid days and it was nice to talk to someone.

“This is what I’ve been working on.” Carlos said proudly.

“What does it do?” Cecil asked.

“Well, it’s not finished yet, so it doesn’t do anything right now. I can’t actually tell you what it _will_ do or that might skew the science of it, but I can tell you that it’s _very_ scientific.”

“Gosh.” Cecil said, sounding impressed. He looked at the machine for a moment, biting his lip, holding one arm with the other and occasionally glancing at Carlos. Carlos knew those signs - Cecil was nervous about something. Cecil cleared his throat and said “It’s, uh, it’s good to know that science is getting done. Uh.”

“You okay?” Carlos asked.

“Oh, yeah, I just. Um.” Cecil said, fidgeting a little. “I was wondering. Would you… um.” Carlos waited patiently. So far this Cecil was identical to his Cecil in every way, and his Cecil had a habit of just not talking when he was nervous about saying something. The best way to get it out of him was to give him a little time. So Carlos waited. After about a minute, Cecil sighed. “There’s been a cloud of man-eating flies hovering over the imaginary corn fields for the last couple of days, and we were hoping it would just go away on it’s own, but it hasn’t. Do you think you could find a way to science them away?” He said.

“Sure, I can have a look at it.” Carlos replied, knowing that that wasn’t what Cecil had been trying to say.

“Great! Great. Would you mind dropping by the station when you’re done? For an interview? I’m sure my listeners would be interested to hear how the dashingly handsome scientist saved the town.”

“Dashingly handsome, huh?” Carlos said with a grin.

“Uh.” Cecil said, his eyes wide and his face flushed dark red. “W-well, I mean. That is to say. Uh. You know. I… I should be going. Goodbye.” He turned and practically ran out of the lab, leaving Carlos still grinning behind him. It was nice to know that Cecil still liked him. It was really, really nice. He went back to his desk and sat there, still smiling and idly doodling for a few minutes before he realised that, actually, Cecil having a crush on him was not necessarily a good thing. He wasn’t planning on staying here long and Cecil could be hurt when he left. Carlos sighed and decided that it would be best if he just avoided Cecil while he was stuck here. He didn’t sleep well that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I'm off to listen to Old Oak Doors Part B! I just wanted to get this done before I did!


	5. Flies

The next morning found Carlos staring at his notes, and then the time machine, and then back at his notes, over and over for an hour. His progress had been slowing down since he started, but that was only to be expected as he got through the parts he remembered easily. He had found that he couldn’t actually remember the last hour or so before he had activated the time machine in the future, which was endlessly frustrating because he knew he had put the last piece in place then and if he couldn’t remember what it was… well, he would just have to try harder to remember what it was. For now though, he was getting absolutely nothing done.

Carlos put down his notebook with a sigh and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. Maybe getting out of the lab would be good for him. Maybe working on another project for a while would help, and he could come back to this later, with fresh eyes. That had always worked before, and he _did_ have the man-eating fly thing to look into but… he didn’t want to stop working on the time machine until it was finished. Carlos wanted to go _home_. He tried not to think about the fact that it had taken a whole team of scientists guided by some outside force almost two months to build the original and all he had was himself and his memories. It could take months, even _years_ before…

No, that was a dangerous train of thought. It was definitely time to take a break and work on something else.

-

The situation with the man-eating flies was, actually, not that hard to deal with. Carlos had encountered a similar problem in his second year in Night Vale. Apparently it was a pretty common event, judging by the way the town had dealt with it quickly and efficiently, using small catapults to fling meat to lure the flies away with.

Carlos would guess that this was the first time a swarm of man-eating flies had descended on Night Vale. Still, building a meat flinging device was pretty easy, though he preferred trebuchets to catapults himself. They just seemed more… scientific. That and they looked _really cool._

So Carlos found himself out in the imaginary corn fields just after midday, with a trebuchet half as tall as he was loaded with meat and watched by a small crowd of onlookers. His first shot missed completely, passing just close enough to the swarm to briefly distract only a few flies. For just a second the sling of the trebuchet reminded him of something, but it slipped away before he could work out what exactly. His next shot passed right through the swarm, which eagerly followed and descended on the meat lump. It didn’t move back when it was done, eliciting a small cheer from the watching crowd. Carlos gave them a thumbs up before he started following the swarm. They would need to be lured a fair distance away to make sure they didn’t come back. The crowd didn’t follow him.

After a couple of hours, Carlos decided the swarm was far enough away. He was alone, tired from pushing and loading and winching the trebuchet, a long way out of town, and still squinting in frustration at the machine’s sling, trying to work out what it reminded him of.

It only clicked on the way back to town. The sling, in a roundabout way, reminded Carlos of a computer mouse. There had been a computer mouse in the time machine! He pulled out his time machine notebook and wrote it down, delighted for all of ten seconds before he remembered that computers _definitely_ hadn’t been invented yet and it would be impossible to get a hold of the right kind of mouse. He only just stopped himself from throwing the notebook away in frustration and kicked the trebuchet instead, which mostly just hurt his foot. He sat down on the frame of the trebuchet and sighed, covering his face with his hands. This was… this was just a minor set back. He could deal with this. Everything would be _fine_ , he just needed to find something to use instead of a computer mouse. Of course, he had no way of knowing what effects that would have on the machine, or if it would even still work if he started substituting parts. Then again, he didn’t know if it would work anyway, so he night as well try.

He wrote down:

_-Computer mouse  
-Substitute????? String with mouse shaped rock? String with something same weight as mouse? A real mouse?_

And got up to keep pushing the trebuchet back into town. At least he got some progress out of the day, even if was was only a little.

-

Carlos considered going to the radio station to report back to Cecil, but in the end he didn’t. Instead, he wrote a note with his account of the afternoon and some assurance that the flies wouldn’t be back for a couple of years at least and slipped it under the radio station door. That would have to do. Besides, there had probably been an intern in the crowd when he first started. Cecil would get the news some how. He always did.

It was late afternoon when he got back, and Carlos managed to fit in almost two hours of working on the time machine, most of which was spent thinking about substitute computer mice (mouses? meese? Was it actually different from the animal or was he just looking for a distraction now?). Just as it was getting too dark to read easily, there was a noise like something falling over from the back room. Carlos jumped at the unexpected sound. After spending hours in silence, it seemed too loud. He stared distrustfully at the back room door, but there was no other noise. Carlos waited a full five minutes before he actually got up to look, moving as quietly as he could just in case.

The door wouldn’t open all the way. It was blocked on the other side by the desk, but Carlos managed to get it wide enough to walk through. The back office was a mess. The desk was on its side, its drawers all pulled out and scattered around the room. The chair was tipped over. The cot was leaning up against the wall, its blankets draped haphazardly across other pieces of furniture.

There was a note pinned to the far wall with, rather disconcertingly, a knife. Carlos read it:

_Hello! We have noticed an unusual amount of whispering and unintelligible muttering at this workplace, and some suspiciously secretive activity._  
This is an official warning, and friendly reminder to please speak up! It is impossible to keep the town safe if we don’t know what you’re doing and thinking 100% of the time!  
Further infractions will result in Consequences.  
Have a nice day.  
\- The Sheriff’s Secret Police.  
P.S. Welcome to Night Vale! 

Carlos put the note down and looked around the room. _This_ was a friendly reminder? Well… it looked like nothing was broken at least. What about…! He hunted through the debris until he found his general notes notebook. A quick glance through told him exactly what he feared. Bits were crossed out, whole pages were missing with no effort made to hide the ragged stumps of where they had once been. On one hand, he was just a little bit terrified now. On the other hand, he was relieved that his decision to always keep the time machine notebook with him wasn’t just mindless paranoia.

Working on automatic, he started putting the room back together. Was this normal? Did everyone get this kind of “friendly reminder” or did this mean the police were watching him especially? Did… did they know about the time machine? He doubted it. He felt sure there would have been something much worse if they knew about the time machine, though he didn’t know what. He didn’t know much about the SSP and how they worked, just that they were apparently very good at what they did.

He finished putting the drawers back in place with a sigh and moved on to remake the bed. Cecil would know. Cecil always knew these things. But of course, he couldn’t go to Cecil because he was avoiding him. Although, honestly, right now that seemed like a really stupid thing to be doing. Carlos needed to talk to _someone_ and he knew Cecil and he could trust Cecil… and _that_ was dangerous thinking because he still didn’t know if this Cecil Palmer and future Cecil Palmer were the same person or not. Telling a potential stranger about his illegal work was not a mistake he could afford to make.

With the room tidied up, Carlos used the last of the daylight to add a new note to his private time machine notebook:

_-Do not attract SSP attention. They may already be watching._

He closed the book and tucked it away again with the sinking feeling that things just got a lot harder for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually have most of the next chapter written already so hopefully you'll get an update in less than three weeks next time.
> 
> Also, thank you for your lovely comments! Sorry I haven't been replying to them, but I do read them and I appreciate every one!!


	6. Park

There were days when Carlos woke up and he could just _feel_ the potential in the day. Days that had a great sense that everything was okay (it wasn’t really, but he could pretend), and he could make _progress_. They were good days, the best kind of day. They were also the kind of day that quickly came fewer and further between as progress on the time machine ground to a halt.

Carlos barely left the lab for a month, which didn’t help. It was a combination of things that kept him in - working on the time machine was the big one, but he was also worried about messing up and attracting more police attention, and he was avoiding Cecil. Well, he was avoiding him in person anyway. Carlos still listened to the radio every day. He worked better with a little background noise and it was nice to hear a voice that wasn’t his own. It helped that it was Cecil’s voice. It also hurt that it was Cecil’s voice, but Carlos found it worse to not listen, so he listened.

Some of the time he spent in the lab was used investigating Night Vale things. Not a lot, since he found that he couldn’t focus if he spent more than a day not working on the time machine, but every few days someone would come to the lab to tell him about the holes that had been appearing all over downtown, or the melting epidemic, or the yellow slime that had started oozing from certain trees, no no, it’s definitely different from the green slime, and it’s coming from _trees_ this time, that’s something a scientist would be interested in, right?

Carlos took every chance he was given to get out of the lab, but he didn’t deliberately seek out reasons to go outside. He would sometimes hear about his… adventures on the radio too, although they weren’t told in the sparkling, effusive way he was used to.

_Most_ of his time in the lab was spent being incredibly frustrated. He hadn’t made any progress on the time machine in days. None at all. The last thing he had remembered was a large spoon that was meant to be a lever, though he didn’t have the part that it was supposed to be levering yet, so It wasn’t much help. Since then, he had hit a wall. It was unbelievably annoying just how _Night Vale_ the thing was. There were no patterns to it, no way for him to look at one part and work out what the next part should be from it. Choosing replacement components would be so much easier if he could only see some kind of pattern to it, but the machine was a mess. He was stuck, completely stuck, with no idea where to go next. He just couldn’t remember anything more about the time machine and he hadn’t been able to for a solid two weeks now.

-

Carlos sat in Mission Grove park, which was a smaller, browner shadow of its future self. He stared at the sky, which was cloudless and empty, an endless gaping maw of cheerfully blue nothing. It was a nice change from staring at the ceiling of the lab. He had spent the day wandering around town, just looking at things. No, not looking, _observing_. For science, of course, and not all because he was unbelievably bored and just needed to get outside and find distractions. Two weeks of no progress was starting to get to him and no one had come by with any scientifically interesting problems for a while either. He had hoped that getting out of the lab would jog his memory somehow or at least give him something else to investigate. It was also nice to think about nothing in particular.

The worst part about having made no progress for so long was that Carlos was sure he was almost finished with the list of parts he needed. Not, actually, anywhere near finishing the machine, but he nearly knew all the pieces he needed and if he could just remember the last few parts he could focus on getting them all together and just _building_ the thing. If he could only finish that list he felt like he would be that much closer to getting home.

Carlos missed home. He missed the familiar faces, he missed the mysterious lights (they apparently hadn’t moved in yet. He hadn’t seen a single floating light since he arrived), he even missed the mandatory pizza. Big Rico’s wasn’t exactly _good_ pizza, but you developed a certain fondness for even the most mediocre of pizzas when you have to eat them every week.

Mostly though, he missed Cecil. Listening to the radio helped a little, but he was still so uncertain about the Cecil here. What if he was the same Cecil? What would that mean? How could he even ask about that kind of thing? “Hey I think I know you from somewhere, are you the same you from a hundred years in the future?” There had to be a way of asking that would… well, not _confirm_ he was the same Cecil, because Carlos was pretty sure there was no way to be completely sure without going back to the future and asking, but at least something he could ask to find out if it was even _possible_ they were the same person.

Carlos was so busy thinking that he didn’t notice anyone was around until they sat down next to him, startling him out of his thoughts.

“Hi.” Said Cecil.

“Oh. Hello.” Carlos said, both relieved that it wasn’t something worse and nervous about it being Cecil.

“Um. Is everything okay?” Cecil asked, with that particular serious sincerity that Carlos had never heard from anyone else. It was so familiar it made his heart ache.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, according to reports, you spend all your time cooped up in your laboratory. Hardly anyone has seen you around since the flies and… well, normally when a new scientist arrives they spend weeks running around looking at _everything_ just _all the time_ , but you barely leave your lab. So. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything is… good. Things are good. I just… I have a lot of science that I need to be in the lab to do, you know. Not everything can be fieldwork.” Carlos explained. He had been practicing excuses in case something like this happened, and it was basically true anyway.

“Are you sure? I mean, I don’t want to pry, but I know a new town can be… difficult to get used to. Night Vale more so than other towns, I’ve heard. So, if you’re just… I don’t know, shy or not good at meeting new people or something, maybe I could help? I could show you around town some time, if you like?” Cecil offered, with an obvious note of hope in his voice and the most ridiculously sweet smile.

“I… I can’t, Cecil, I’m sorry. I’m just… really busy, you know.” It took everything Carlos had to turn him down. Cecil on the radio was bad enough, but Cecil in person was almost impossible to resist. It would be better though, in the long run. Carlos wasn’t going to stay here and it wouldn’t be fair to Cecil to get attached and then hurt him like that.

“Oh.” Cecil said. Softly. Quietly. Unbearably familiar. There were a few moments of silence before Cecil stood up. “Well, if you’re ever in need of company, here.” He handed Carlos a scrap of paper and walked away.

Carlos watched Cecil disappear around the corner before he looked at the paper. It had an address on it, presumably Cecil’s. He smiled at it. He had been expecting a phone number, but of course, phones didn’t exist yet. He tucked the address away with a sigh. He missed his Cecil so much, and talking to this one only made him remember that even more sharply. He needed to get _home_ and the sooner he did, the better.


	7. Glow Cloud?

Another week passed, quietly and painfully slowly. Carlos hadn’t remembered anything new about the time machine. He kept putting together the parts that he did know and that were available to him, but it wouldn’t be long before those ran out and he would need to start getting creative with replacement parts. He wasn’t looking forward to that, but he didn’t have a lot of options. If he was honest with himself (and he did try to be) Carlos was starting to worry that he would never get home. He mostly avoided thinking about it, but every now and then the thoughts would creep up on him.

He knew it was unreasonable, but he had wanted to be finished by now. A month and a half wasn’t too long to be stuck away from home but… it wasn’t fun being trapped somewhere that was so eerily familiar and just slightly wrong. He tried to keep a positive attitude, but the solitude and his memory block were starting to get to him. Carlos had studied psychology a little, and he knew a few things about amnesia - like that it could clear up spontaneously at any moment, but also sometimes the memories never came back and if they did it could take years. He also knew that sometimes the best way to remember something, or work out the solution to a problem, was to explain the situation out loud.

There was no way that was going to happen though, not with the Sheriff’s Secret Police listening. Carlos was definitely not going to start telling them all about his time machine troubles, no matter how much it might help - their “friendly reminder” was warning enough. So talking to himself wasn’t an option. The other thing he could do was to talk to someone else, someone he could trust and who knew how to get around SSP surveillance. He did know someone like that…

Carlos still had Cecil’s address, tucked away in his top drawer. At least once a day he would pull it out and think about going to see him. He hadn’t so far, but it was nice to know that he could. If he could find some way to prove that the Cecil here and now was the same as the Cecil there and then, Carlos was willing to risk telling him about the time machine. He would even settle for reasonable evidence that the two Cecils were probably the same at this point. He was just getting so _tired_ of being alone all the time.

He turned the address over and over in his hands, before putting it away again with a sigh. Maybe later.

-

The radio crackled to life, the noise of it making Carlos jump. After six weeks he still wasn’t used to the way it would noisily turn on by itself. He wasn’t actually sure the radio was ever technically off, though he _was_ more and more certain every day that radio hadn’t been invented yet and he really needed to look into how these Night Vale ones worked. He shook his head and went back to brainstorming possible spark plug substitutes, only half listening to the radio.

Carlos was staring blankly at the page when the words “mysterious glowing cloud” caught his attention. He turned to the radio, listening properly now.

“The mysterious glowing cloud has moved above town hall. It still doesn’t seem to be doing anything other than changing colour at random, but, since we don’t know what exactly it is yet, I would recommend leaving it alone. Just in case.”

A glowing cloud that changed colours? Well that was familiar. Carlos chewed on the end of his pen, wondering what to do. If this was an actual Glow Cloud, like the one he knew and hailed back home, then he could probably get valuable data about it, especially since there was no restriction on pens at the moment. All the information he had tried to get on the Glow Cloud back home had been collected digitally and it was always erased within an hour. At least, Carlos thought it was. He could only ever remember a faint scent of vanilla when he thought about studying the Glow Cloud, so really anything he could get from this would be useful. Assuming it was the same… species? It could even be the same cloud, for all he knew. How long _did_ clouds live anyway?

Carlos grabbed his notebook and whatever useful looking equipment he could fit in his pockets (he still wasn’t sure what most of it was supposed to do - old school science gear was more confusing than he’d thought it would be) and headed for the town hall. He needed a break anyway.

There were only one or two people actually looking at the cloud when he got there. Everyone else was just hurrying past with their eyes averted. The cloud itself was surprisingly small. Carlos was pretty sure that the Glow Cloud he knew was much much bigger than this. Maybe is was a juvenile? It wasn’t dropping dead animals either. Carlos started scribbling notes, humming like he always did when he was really interested in a project.

“Um, excuse me, you’re the scientist, right?” Someone asked. Carlos glanced up long enough to register that who ever they were, they looked a hell of a lot like Steve Carlsberg.

“Yep.” He replied, going back to his notes. The cloud had shifted through several colours since he had been watching and he was trying to work out if there was a pattern or rhythm to them.

“Ok, good, um. Do you know what that thing is?” Not-Steve asked.

“Well, I can’t be sure yet since it isn’t behaving like one, but I think it’s a Glow Cloud.” Carlos said. A dead hedgehog splatted onto the ground a few metres in front of him. “Ooooh. Never mind, it’s _definitely_ a Glow Cloud. I’ve never seen one this small before. Well, maybe Deb, but I don’t know if she was technically a Glow Cloud. She never dropped any dead animals.” He was mostly talking to himself, but if Not-Steve wanted to stick around and listen, Carlos wasn’t going to stop him.

“So... clouds raining dead animals is pretty normal then?”

“Hah! No, not even a little bit. But Glow Clouds doing it is. It’s not dangerous, just carry a strong umbrella. Also, keep an eye on the size of the animals, they can get pretty big.” Carlos sidestepped to dodge a falling rat. “Hmmm, probably best to find shelter about now. I mean, I don’t know if a cloud this size can even drop animals big enough to do damage, but, y’know, just in case.”

Not-Steve seemed to take this very seriously and left immediately. Carlos ignored his own advice and stuck around writing notes until the corpse rain was consistently animals larger than cats. He started heading back to the lab then, pleased with the information he had gathered. The cloud was still pretty small so he didn’t have to go far to get away from the corpse rain.

About halfway back to the lab, someone called “Hey, you. Scientist.” Carlos turned around to respond and froze when he saw that the person who had spoken was wearing a Sheriff’s Secret Police uniform. They stopped a little too close and squinted suspiciously at him. “You sure seem to know a lot about this cloud thing.” They said accusingly.

“Er, yes? I’m a scientist. It’s my job to know a lot about a lot of things.” Carlos said, resisting the urge to lean away or take a step back. They really were far too close.

“Have you seen this before?”

“Yes.” Carlos figured there wasn’t any point in lying, as long as they didn’t ask for too many details.

“How can you have seen this before? We’ve never seen this before.” Again, they sounded like they were trying to accuse Carlos of something.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of things in the world you haven’t seen before.” Carlos said, deciding it was a bad idea before he even finished.

“And what’s _that_ supposed to mean?” The officer glared, leaning even closer. Carlos had to lean away this time.

“Er. Nothing.” The officer glared silently for a moment longer before continuing.

“What have you got going on in your lab? We know you’re building something big in there.” They said it like a warning.

“That’s hardly a secret.” Carlos said with a shrug that he hoped looked careless.

“You haven’t told anyone about it.” The officer pointed out. Well, that was true.

“No one asked about it.” He countered. That was also true.

“What does it do?” They demanded in a tone that couldn’t be denied. Carlos swallowed, hoping he didn’t look as nervous as he felt.

“Science. It’s uh. It does very delicate science. I could explain but it would take some time to go over it properly and I’m sure you’re very busy.”

“Then summarise. What does it do?” They asked again.

“Well. To put it simply it… measures things.” Carlos said. He was mentally kicking himself. This kind of question was always going to come up at some point and he really should have taken the time to think up some imaginary function of the time machine. “On a quantum level. And… compares the measurements to base Tyson functions.” That was complete nonsense, but it sure was science-y sounding nonsense. In Carlos’s experience, if you just threw enough technical sounding words out there, most people wouldn’t ask for more details. There was a silence that went on long enough to make him fidget uncomfortably before the officer nodded.

“Alright.” They said. “You remember our warning?” Carlos nodded. “Good. See to it that you don’t get yourself in any trouble. We’re watching you.” They paused. “We’re watching everyone, it’s our job. But especially you.” They added, before they finally left.

Carlos tried not to look too relieved (after all, someone would still be watching), but he couldn’t help letting out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. The encounter had only been a couple of minutes long but it had felt like an eternity to Carlos.

He walked back to the lab quickly and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to look at not suspicious as possible, doing little mindless tasks like tightening screws and cleaning beakers until night fell.


	8. Is it Radio?

Carlos stared at the tree. He had noticed it that morning outside the back room window and he could have sworn that it hadn’t been here yesterday, but that wasn’t the most unusual thing about it. He wasn’t sure, but it _looked_ like it was two trees, one very young and one very old, somehow spliced together. Or maybe they were the same tree somehow split along it’s own time line? Some kind of half Benjamin Button tree? It didn’t seem to be dangerous at all - after about an hour of observing it cautiously from a distance, Carlos had got up the guts to touch the tree. It hadn’t moved or grown spikes or spat poison, so he was working under the tentative assumption that it was safe. He didn’t specialise in botany or dendrology though, so all he could say for sure was that there was a tree here that hadn’t been there before and one half of it was very old and one half was very young. He studied science, after all, not plants or nature.

Carlos wondered if this was an isolated incident or if other trees were doing this. He considered, not for the first time, going down to the radio station to tell them about it and ask the town if anyone had noticed anything like it elsewhere but… well, it wasn’t actually doing anything and it didn’t seem to be spreading, so what need was there to tell everyone? Better not to go to the radio station, really.

He gathered a few samples anyway. Might as well run some tests on it while he worked on… something else. Not the time machine, unfortunately. There still hadn’t been any progress on that front in the last two weeks. Carlos tried not to think about it too much but… two months was a long time, and he was starting to feel like maybe he would never finish the time machine, and never get home. And sometimes, when it got too dark to work and he had nothing to occupy his mind, he could _only_ think about the possibility of never getting home, of being stuck here forever. He could never sleep on those nights.

For now, though, Carlos spent his days investigating Night Vale. It was almost relaxing in a way. Nostalgic. This Night Vale seemed far less deadly than the one he knew, and the mysteries it held were so different. He still got more questions than answers out of everything he tried to understand, but after years of living in Night Vale, he expected that. Today he was going to try working out the radio thing

To start with he wanted to find out if they actually used radio waves or not. The simplest way to do that, Carlos decided, was to build his own radio, one he knew followed the laws of physics. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to build a functional radio without any transistors or speakers, but Carlos had learned how to Macgyver one up out of pretty much anything in high school, and he had never really forgotten the skill. After almost three hours of fiddling with bits of wire and pencils and scraps of paper, Carlos was sitting outside with a functional radio. The earth wire was actually stuck into the ground, and the speaker was made from a rolled up piece of paper, and it _worked_. He was very proud of it.

Carlos sat there fiddling with the “tuner” and listening intently for the better part of an hour. All he picked up was faint static. He checked and double checked, but he couldn’t hear any voices at all. He went back into the lab for a few minutes to make sure, and yes, the “radio” in here was on and playing Cecil’s show loud and clear. Carlos hummed to himself, thinking. Whatever this was, it wasn’t radio. He wasn’t surprised at all.

So now the question became, what was the thing everyone here called radio? Carlos wrote down a few quick notes and ideas while he walked back outside to get his test radio. It was gone. In it’s place was a note that said simply:

_Suspicious equipment confiscated._   
_-SSP_

“Oh come on! It was a radio!” Carlos exclaimed in exasperation.

“A radio with no bloodstones? Oh yeah, _sure_.” A nearby shrub muttered. Carlos glared at it.

“Fine! Whatever, I don’t care! I can just build another one if I need to.”

“We’ll confiscate it.” The shrub said.

“Why?!” Carlos practically yelled. The shrub did not reply. “You know what, it doesn’t even matter. Who cares.” Carlos grumbled, stomping around to the front of the lab. He was about to go inside when a movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked up to see what was apparently someone very tall in long hooded robes a little way further down the street.

Carlos looked away from the figure automatically, realising even as he did that they had not reacted to him looking at them in the first place. On top of that, this was the first hooded figure he had seen since he arrived in old Night Vale. Carlos watched as they vanished around the street corner and, after a moment of hesitation, decided to follow them. He needed to get away from the lab and all the frustration and lack of progress it held for a while anyway.

As he followed the hooded figure, Carlos made notes. He wrote down the date (or at least, the approximate date. He still didn’t have a solid consensus on what the actual year was, but the month was probably July.) wondering if this was the first hooded figure to inhabit the town. He noticed that as well as being unnaturally tall, the figure seemed misshapen somehow, kind of hunched like they were wearing a backpack under their robe. Maybe all hooded figures were like that though - it was hard to be sure what a being you weren’t allowed to look at actually looked like. After a few minutes the figure seemed to notice him. They started walking faster, and Carlos did too, to keep up with them. Every now and then they glanced back and sped up a little, until they turned a corner. Carlos was almost jogging by then and he ran right into the figure, who had stopped just around the corner.

“Hey, quit following me!” They snapped. The shadow inside the hood glinted with the hint of many eyes, and just a touch of angry flame that Carlos suddenly recognised.

“Wait, you’re not a hooded figure, you’re an angel!” He blurted out.

“No I’m not.” The angel said, stepping back and looking surprised.

“Yes you are, I mean,” Carlos said, gesturing to what he could now see was not a robe, but a long cloak that was doing a bad job of hiding a pair of wings. “It’s kind of obvious.”

“It is?” They sounded worried and their shoulder slumped a little. “I thought I was doing a good job. Ugh, wings are just so hard to hide, you know?”

“Sure.” Said Carlos, who didn’t. “Hey, angels help people, right?” He added, an idea suddenly forming.

“Uhhhh… yeah… sometimes. I mean, we don’t just go around giving out free favours. Really depends on who’s asking and what they’re after.” The angel shifted uncomfortably, glancing around nervously.

“Do you know anything about…” Carlos lowered his voice. “Time travel?”

“What?”

“Time travel.” He said, only marginally louder.

“Oh, time travel?” The angel said far too loudly. “Haha, well, yes and no. Kind of a funny story really. I mean, I can do it sure but, uh. Just between you and me, I’m not very good at it. I mean, I was supposed to arrive here like a hundred years in the future, for like a war or a revolution or something like that. Not supposed to be any angels around here for a loooong time yet. And now I’m stuck here for at least a month until the meter recharges.” The angel paused. “Uh. I probably should not have told you all that.” They added.

“What do you mean ‘meter’?”

“Really, _that’s_ what you’re asking about?” Carlos nodded and the angel shrugged. “Just a technical term. Angel stuff. Can’t go jumping through time all willy nilly, you know, that takes a lot of energy and I need to recharge in between.”

“Right, so, in about a month you’ll be jumping to… around 2016? Could you, just hypothetically of course, maybe take me with you?” Carlos asked, trying not to sound as desperately hopeful as he felt.

“Whoa, no. Sorry buddy, no passengers allowed. It’s against the Rules.”

“Rules?”

“Yep.” The angel said, not offering any further explanation. Carlos doubted he would get any even if he asked directly.

“So… does that mean you _could_ take me but you won’t?” He guessed.

“Eeehhh, more like I can’t and even if I could I wouldn’t.”

“Oh.” Carlos didn’t bother trying to hide his disappointment. “What… what about time _machines_? Do you know anything about those?”

“Hmmm, nope. I do miracles, not machinery.” The angel said with a shrug. “Man, why are you so obsessed with getting to the future?”

“Because…” Carlos stopped, looked around and dropped his voice to a hiss. “Because I’m from there and I just want to get home.”

“Wow. That’s rough buddy. How did you even get here?”

“Accidentally, like you.”

“So, what, you’re just trapped here now? Like forever?”

“I _hope_ not forever. I’m definitely stuck until I finish building my time machine though.” Carlos sighed, staring down at his feet. “ _If_ I finish building my time machine.”

“Jeez. Well, I’d love to help you out, y’know, time travellers sticking together and all, but there’s really nothing I can do man.”

“Well, you could maybe be a little quieter about the whole time travel thing. I’ll be in a mess of trouble if anyone finds out about that.”

“Deal. Now I should get out of here before anyone else spots me. Oh, uh, how about you don’t tell anyone you saw me, yeah?”

“If anyone asks, you don’t even exist.” Carlos mumbled.

“Thanks man, I owe you.”

“You do?” Carlos said, hardly daring to feel the little bubble of hope that rose in his heart. It sank again when he looked up to find that the angel was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> During my research for this chapter I found these REALLY COOL videos on how to make a [radio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-X1RuMQZQ8) and a [speaker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H83MSAav6Rg) out of, basically, random junk you can find anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to comment and point out mistakes and such, that would be great of you.
> 
> You can also come talk to me [over on tumblr](lemonbubble.tumblr.com). Gentle nagging and encouragements are welcome uwu


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